Trigger Warning: Proceed With Caution

Tag Archives: wedding

“You never asked me what I actually want,” I tell my boyfriend who is raving non-stop about the surprise birthday gift he has spent a lot of time and money on for me. “Well when you live with someone you kind of get to know what they want,” is his retort. “I’m good at gifts. It’s the one thing I’m really good at.”
I sigh and look at him, “but there are only three things I really want.”

“Yeah I know,” he lists them off: “a diamond, a house and puppies…it’s not any of those.”

“Then I don’t want it,” I say without meaning to be surly but probably sounding it anyway. I don’t want him spending ridiculous amounts of money on something I’m not going to appreciate and which isn’t going to get us closer to our goals (if it doesn’t actually make us break up first).
“Maybe it’s something you didn’t know you wanted,” is his confident come back. “I guarantee you you will love it and there will be tears.”
I walk away from the conversation. I know I won’t love it the way he wants me too. I know almost eerily that we are going to end up fighting over it. I feel like it is unfair of him to build up this much expectation and put it all on me over something that I’m not interested in. I tell him I am worried that he is so excited over it and has talked it up for so long that I am scared when I don’t like it at all or as much as he is expecting, that it will upset him. He seems unconcerned.

I think, without snooping which I refuse to do for the tiniest chance I actually will love it, that he is going to fly my family in as a surprise. As much as I love them, there are so many reasons I don’t want them here right now, but I am not going to get into that in this post.
I find myself in the same position at 33 as I was at 30…living with a boyfriend who has promised an engagement and a marriage but who has failed to deliver within the agreed upon time frame. I wonder how stupid I must be to be repeating this exact scenario only 3 short years later, but this post is not to discuss my (blatantly obvious) stupidity.
I want to discuss disappointment instead. I want to discuss what it is like to only want an engagement ring and nothing else; to want a token of commitment after everything I have done and sacrificed and endured. I have been waiting 9 months now based on how my boyfriend talks. Based on all the comments about how he can’t wait for me to be his wife or for us to spend the rest of our lives together or for me to become Mrs. (Insert-his-last-name-here).
So I am at the point where an engagement is no longer going to be romantic or a surprise or this wonderful sweep-me-off-my-feet-moment or the fairytale proposal I have longed for. It is now something that is a constant disappointment as it fails to materialize. It is going to start becoming a source of contention between us and break us down. He is going to spend a ridiculous amount of money on something I just don’t want right now and when I am disappointed it will be all my fault. I will be the ungrateful bitch who didn’t want this “gift”. It will be all on me even though I have clearly communicated what I do want over and over.
He told me when we met that he was unlike any man I had ever dated before. In many ways he is not, but on this front he is the same if not worse for promising not to make me wait and then failing me again and again. I wonder if I should just short cut to tears and snot and mascara in the bath tub on my birthday like the last one ended up? It is hard not to get what your heart most desires when it has been promised indefinitely by the other.

I am one week away from going home. My goal was to be in the 120’s by then. It isn’t happening.

Going home is exciting and stressful all at the same time. Exciting because I get to see everyone, stressful because of finances and many other things. I will be gone for 5 weeks. I leave my boyfriend and children behind which will cause me anxiety. I go to be with my family which will also cause me anxiety. Nothing is as triggering as going back to the root of your eating disorder.

I love my family. I am overjoyed to see them. One of my oldest, bestest friends is getting married and I have the honour of being her bridesmaid. I am, of course, worried about being thin enough in my bridesmaid’s dress.

I am torn: torn by my boyfriend not being able to come with me and torn by my family who need me too. I drop out of one life and into another, worlds apart. It is emotionally overwhelming.

I cope by eating, or not eating. When I eat, I purge. By the time I leave next week, I will be beside myself. I will cry all the way there and on the way back, I will cry all the way here for different reasons.

I had firmly believed, that I would be going home engaged to my boyfriend. He told me he would give me a reason to come back and I thought that would be it. Part of me imagined he would surprise me by buying a last-minute ticket and coming with me, or just showing up back home. I know I am setting myself up for a massive heartache. There will be no engagement ring. There will be no surprise visit. When I get back from my trip in July and am bereft and lost and distressed, he is going away for a week with his kids. I will need him, but they will need him more. Some days I just have to accept that this is how it is.

The heart wants what it wants and right now I want to go home and never come back here. This is no fairytale. There is no happily-ever-after.

We went away for the weekend to a wedding for my boyfriend’s cousin. We had the children with us and all his family had traveled there. After a lot of drama involving the mother of his daughter (she thought that she should attend the wedding and I didn’t), we managed to go too.

Road trips are hard for people with eating disorders. There is no routine, there are few ‘safe’ foods and lots of triggers. I was already high on anxiety from the drama by the time we left. I anticipated someone in my boyfriend’s family would make a comment about the little girl’s mother or make one of their stupid pregnancy jokes in our direction. Before we even left, I was on guard and expecting it.

Nothing happened. Nobody said anything dumb. We had a great weekend. We stayed with friends and drank wine and took the kids swimming.

At the wedding I had my heart set on a slow dance with my boyfriend. It was all I wanted. The night went on and on with no chance of it happening as we chased the children around and spent time with his family. His daughter takes up all his time and attention. It is just the way it is. When she is around, his son and I barely get noticed. I had a feeling that I was setting myself up for disappointment by fixating on the one moment I really wanted: a slow dance in his arms.

I do it all the time by setting my heart on something: a romantic date, a weekend away together, him coming home with me to meet my family and of course, an engagement ring. I leave in a week. There is no chance now that I am going home with a ring on my finger.

As the night wore on, I ate more (pasta, potatoes, bread, lasagne – all good for anxiety relief) and drank more and eventually went to purge it all. When I came out of the washroom by boyfriend was standing there looking for me. He had been looking for me for some time.

“Where else would you expect to find me?” I replied in tipsy honesty.

“I should have guessed,” was his response.

Normal people would have been on the dance floor.

By the time he came to get me for the last dance of the evening, his daughter was half asleep on my lap. Her needs trump my needs. I wasn’t going to move a sleeping child so I could go dance. I went back to the hotel and cried in the bathtub instead.

I had a ‘check-in’ conversation with my boyfriend at bed time to make sure that we were on the same page (of the same book). I told him we never actually talk about time lines and plans for our future. I said that if we don’t put the wheels in motion nothing will ever happen. I told him we are nearly at a year and we never actually discuss our future unless it is vague. I made the mistake of asking him how he felt about our situation and what he was thinking so that we could see if our timelines and plans would mesh.

How the tune has changed from “I can’t wait for you to be my wife” and ” I want to spend the rest of my life with you” to this: “I don’t have a timeline”, “well I might want to marry you in two years, but I don’t know how I will feel then…what if something goes wrong?” and “what if I need 6 more months, what if I’m not ready?”

Let’s just say that no matter how he tried to explain himself, I got the message loud and clear. Now that he has a live in maid who pays rent and a step mommy for his kids, he suddenly isn’t that interested in how fast he can make me his wife. Like the saying goes: why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?

I reminded him that he has already had his children and therefore isn’t even concerned about the window of opportunity for us to have more. I reminded him I will be 33 in four months and I am not willing to pass up my time to have children while he decides if he wants to be with me or not. I reminded him that I am the one who has made a massive commitment to him by moving in with him and taking on his kids and all the (never-ending) shit that goes along with his situation. I reminded him that I cook and clean and do laundry and take care of him and the kids. My finances are now supporting him and his kids. I asked what more he could possibly want out of a girlfriend. I didn’t say what I was thinking: that he has nothing much to offer – other than being a nice guy. He has no money, no boundaries and a baggage carousel that is giving me motion sickness. I reminded him that he told me in the beginning that he was unlike any guy I had ever dated before, that he was different.

Sadly, he has proved he is just like the rest of them, but under worse circumstances. So I guess “different” was the right word. I am more mad at myself than I am at him. After all I was the one who swore blind that I wouldn’t date a North American (EVER AGAIN) or a non-Christian and neither would I move in with anyone until there was a ring on my finger. So now I am mad at myself for doing what I said I wouldn’t which means I have learned nothing from the preceding heartaches. I am mad at myself for believing that he would be different from any other guy. How dumb am I? I guess to answer my own question, I am a fat anorexic so I am obviously not going to be a MENSA candidate any time soon. I am mad at myself for trusting him when he told me he wanted me to be his wife and that he couldn’t wait. I am mad at myself for taking him literally when he said he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. I am mad for at myself for imagining that a proposal was coming at any moment: christmas, valentines, mother’s day, the long weekend when we go away, a trip home to surprise me when I am with my family…

More so I am mad at myself for repeating the things I do that get me nowhere: loving too much, giving too much, trusting too much. He knew when he met me that my plan was to leave the country and return home to my family so he said he would give me a reason to stay. He knew when he started dating me that i had no intention of waiting around for an engagement, that if we weren’t serious, I wasn’t interested. I was very upfront with him when I said I wanted my own children (even though he didn’t want any more). i said frankly that I didn’t plan on waiting the obligatory 3 years that seem to be standard before a guy “shits or gets off the pot”. I mean this guy is 40 years old. You either know or you don’t. Waiting 3 years to ask someone to marry you is the kind of nonsense you do in your twenties….when no one cares about timelines. The last guy I dated for 3 years (who promised me an engagement ring when we moved in together) said the same things to me that my boyfriend said tonight: he had no timeline, he was not ready, he was not sure what might happen or how he might feel in the future.

This is a conversation with my boyfriend saying he will buy gifts for my brothers so that they like him “if I’m going to ask for your hand in marriage someday.”

If…

Someday…

I have been waiting for a proposal since Christmas. I know what these men are like. Someday will never come. This one keeps telling me he is different to any man I have dated before. I am yet to believe him. He is yet to prove it.

I put my cards on the table when we started dating. I told him I wouldn’t wait around indefinitely. I told him I wanted a marriage and children. I assumed all the risk and made a huge commitment moving in with him 4 months ago. Now he says “if” and “someday”.

I have already given him everything he could ask for: I have taken on his 2 children from 2 different mothers and all the ensuing baggage that comes with. I have tolerated the intolerable for him. It has been nothing but stress since the beginning of our relationship. I have given up a simple happy life for drama and complications because he has no boundaries and hasn’t sorted out the mess he made of his life.

I have foregone dates, romance, quality time and swapped them for mothering, cleaning, cooking and never ending laundry. I have given up sleep ins and freedom for waking up early to dress kids and make school lunches. I have lost evenings of frivolity and fun to homework, bath time and bed time. I have taken on the financial burden of his children, spending money on them now instead of myself. I have given up a life I dreamed of in Africa with my family to make a family with a man who says “if” and “someday”.

I must not be worth more.

I only have myself to blame for giving him everything up front.

I have put up with things many others would have walked away from because he told me he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. He used to say, “I can’t wait for you to be my wife”. He never says it anymore. Instead he tells me there is a hole in his favourite underpants while we lie in bed and I am thinking of a wedding and children.

And I know he thinks he is being a good guy buying gifts for my brothers. He would never understand how that statement could do so much damage. How triggering it is for someone with anxiety and an eating disorder. He will never know that I already have a date in mind which I will not wait past.

We go to the wedding today. I wear 2 different outfits: one to the ceremony and one to the reception. I don’t eat all day so that I might look vaguely acceptable (to myself or perhaps some passers by). My boyfriend doesn’t look at me, or notice me, or comment on my apprearance. Given the horrible things he said a few days ago when I was trying on dresses for this event, maybe it is a blessing – you know the kind they say come in “disguise”.

I starve and I primp and I preen. I paint my face and curl my eyelashes and spritz and tease and my legs are tanned and my collar bones are glittered. I brush and comb and fuss and tuck and pin and change and inspect and criticize and adjust and ruefully accept the outcome. We arrive at the ceremony and he says a blanket “you guys looks snazzy” to all 3 of us. Snazzy…the epitomy of compliments. The truth is he only has eyes for his daughter. When she is around, his son and I cease to exist. I get compliments from his friends at the wedding. Complete strangers talk to me in the washroom telling me they like my dress or hair. One woman hugs me and uses the word “gorgeous”. My boyfriend barely acknowledges me. He is disconnected, preoccupied and I am just the maid who had fed and cleaned and dressed and delivered his children to him while he has been drinking with his friends.

He takes his daughter “for a walk” which is code for calling her mother. I sit at a table for ten fat, repulsive and alone, staring into my appetizer, looking for love. After the briefest pretense I walk away from the table and in my high heels and lace and pearls and curls, I toss back up the disappointment. There is not enough wine to soothe my discontented soul.

His daughter is sick and whiny. She takes up all our attention. There is no time for “us”. There is no hand holding. There is no smiling into each other’s eyes. There is no dancing at this wedding. I hold her and she fidgets, unhappy. He holds her. She cries for cupcakes. No matter what we do, she is fractious. We are home by 10:09pm on a Saturday night. I wanted to slow dance in his arms and dream of our wedding which we both know (but won’t acknowledge) will never happen. The kind of things you do when you are only 9 months into a relationship. I wanted the overflow of love and happiness from this union to flood out hearts. But there are children to take care of and his stomach is upset by the Indian food (which I hear about in graphic, unromantic detail), so we go home. I pour myself wine in the kitchen, take out the flower from my hair while my boyfriend puts his daughter to bed. His woefully neglected son comes to me in the kitchen and tells me that he feels like we don’t love him. I wrap my arms around him knowing exactly what that feels like and hating myself for not being able to stop him from feeling it too.

After the tragedy of trying on dresses for my boyfriend the other night, I decided to try on some dresses alone today. I need one (or two) for the wedding we are going to tomorrow. I put on my favourite BCBG dress that I had altered from a size 8 to a size 2 when I was pretty sick a few years ago. (That is ED sick in case you were wondering.) It zipped. It fit. Angels might as well have sung the Hallelujah chorus for me. I am certainly nowhere near as thin as I got 2 years ago, but I am well on my way.

At my CT scan today the nurse told me that it was easy to redo my dosage because I was “so tiny”. It went a long way to healing the devastation of my boyfriend asking me how “it was even possible” for me to fit in my friend’s dresses, because she has “a much smaller frame” than me. I got the “skinny bitch” out of my coworker as he rapped my hip bones and told me I had no ass this week. (We are dancers so there is nothing weird about observing each others’ bodies.) I got a “you have my dream body” from a pretty svelte girl at a party last night.

My boyfriend, the kids and I ate dinner on the back deck tonight. I made salad and baked pasta. I had 3 helpings of pasta and probably would have had more, but everyone got up and went inside. My stomach hurt as I cleaned up dinner. As per usual, my boyfriend was upstairs bathing his little girl and talking to her mother on the phone. It is the part of the night where I get to clean up dinner and the kitchen (aka the shitty chores), instead of bonding with a child that I desperately need to bond with. After a while I heard him calling for me from upstairs (I’m guessing they were done with her mother and it was ok for me to exist again as someone other than the maid). I ignored him, tossed back my wine and went to throw up dinner. I plan on looking even thinner in that dress tomorrow.

Last night’s comments came from my darling boyfriend. I am still determined to write a book on dumb s**t people say to someone with an eating disorder. It is endless…

We have a wedding to go to on Saturday so I borrowed some gorgeous dresses from a friend of mine. I borrow dresses from her all the time because she has a wardrobe I simply can’t afford.

My boyfriend asked me when I was going to try on the dresses for him and I told him I felt like a heffalump and hadn’t been planning on it. I felt uncomfortable putting dresses on in front of him and standing there in my underwear. He asked me what would determine which of the ten dresses I picked on the day and I told him how fat I felt was always the determining factor.

So I started putting on the dresses. I was on the second one when he said, “how is it possible that you fit in K’s dresses?” I looked at him startled as I tried to zip up a dress that was a bit big for me. “What do you mean?” I asked staring at myself in the mirror. “Well she is shorter than you and has a much a smaller frame than you,” he responded in all seriousness. I just opened my eyes wide staring at him in horror. He saw the look on my face, “this isn’t going to end well for me is it?” he asked. “Not when you compare me to someone who has just had their second baby and tell me that they are smaller than me,” I responded as I removed the dress and went to put on sweat pants and a t-shirt and covered up my disgusting body. “Aren’t you going to try on the other dresses for me?” he asked as I closed the bathroom door. “I would prefer to do it when I am by myself,” was all I said.

I got into bed fully dressed. “What is that unhappy look for?” my boyfriend asked. I just looked at him wondering how nice it must be to be so clueless. I lay there thrilled that I had purged my dinner. It had been validated for me. He tried to touch me and I could tell he wanted to have sex. I just turned out the light and rolled over. I didn’t want to be touched. The man who tries to pretend that I am “hot” and “sexy” all the time just told me in-not-so-many-words that I was fat. He is forever trying to convince me that I have a beautiful body that turns him on. He has undone everything in a few words: “How is it possible that you fit…she has a much smaller frame than you…” All night I felt it eating away at me. I wanted to be anywhere else rather than lying next to him. He tried again this morning to cuddle me and put his hands down my pants. I firmly pulled my pants up and my shirt down, covering the body that is so repulsive. He took the hint and got out of bed.

The wedding I was looking forward to is ruined. The beautiful dresses I was so excited to wear hang on my wardrobe taunting me. I don’t want to go. I don’t care anymore. I had planned to get up and go to gym this morning. I feel horribly depressed. I feel hung over from drinking and purging last night. My anxiety is out of control. I want the man I love to understand, but he doesn’t. He makes it worse. All the time.

be the one who went backwards and forwards between 2 houses, living out of the boot of my car, during that weird in between part of the relationship when we weren’t living together

live together without at least being engaged first (hello, can I wait long enough for some commitment before giving up my maid services for free?)

wait endlessly for an engagement/wedding

move into his house rather than mine

be the one making all the sacrifice and assuming all the risk in the relationship

live on his timeline

give up the opportunity to move home for a man and stay in North America because of him

I never even thought to add that I would never date a man with kids because that was never part of any equation. In fact the day before our first date, I swore blind it wasn’t a date simply because he had children and I didn’t want to get involved in that kind of situation. Don’t ask me how my big list of DON’Ts is going…

Some days I look at my life choices and laugh at myself because they are just so laughable. Who does these things? Who makes these kind of dumb decisions? Who doesn’t learn the first time around and keeps repeating the same mistakes?

Well…I never said I was smart. After all, I am a fat bulimic. And, on that note, I have started purging again.

I had to. Life is boring. It is mundane and of course I swore blind that the only reason I would stay was for an extraordinary love. Yes, I am waiting for the kind that sweeps me off my feet. The kind that they write about or make movies about. I said I wouldn’t stay if it was just going to be ordinary. Well guess what? It is ordinary – EVERY DAMN DAY And I don’t think it is ever going to be enough for me, in the same way that I will never be enough. I am bored by the routine.

My heart is somewhere else. We all know that. I have never made a secret of it; never hidden it. I am a discontent. I am a dreamer. I am in all likelihood delusional. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that every day is the same: wake up (chronically sleep deprived) to a dirty, disorganized house. Try fruitlessly to clean or tidy or sweep or do dishes or put toys away or stare at the mess and die on the inside. So much for a never-ending love story: it is more like never ending laundry. Nothing I do makes a dent in the chaos. Go to gym or work or both. No matter. I am eternally fat anyway. Come home to cook and clean and clean and cook. Who cares. It never ends. Try to be the perfect step-mommy. Fail. Try again. Fail harder. Give up. Cry in the bath tub. Pull myself together. Have a melt down. Drink excessively. Try to instill some boundaries. Fail, of course. Bake some healthy cookies. Feed the kids candy. Give in. Hate myself some more. Read a self-help book. Realize I am a bitch. Make school lunches. Realize I am not their mother(s). Try again. Fail again.

This is our “dating”.

I have started starving again during the day from the anxiety. I have started coming home longing to binge my way to oblivion. I look forward to drinking the most. What else is there to look forward to? No date nights (no money). No weekends away (no money). No wining or dining or shopping or movies or drinks or vacations or diamonds or roses or who cares anymore. I am obviously not worth those things.

I have made his life infinitely easier and made mine infinitely harder. I thought somewhere along the line there would be some reward, a payoff…something to make it all worth it.

There is the perfunctory “I love you” in the darkness before sleep (no sex – again). It is sad and empty and it sucks the life out of me: not my mistakes, but the ones that I’ve agreed to pay for by being here. That I will pay for over and over again every day of my life that I chose to stay. I try to tell him that I am not meant for this life. That I am not the person for him or his children; that I have made the wrong decision. He doesn’t believe me. It is like he is fighting to hang on to me because he wants someone to love. I would want to be loved if it was me in the situation instead of him. I get it. I keep saying that he needs someone else. That I am freaking out. That I made the wrong choice. He cannot allay my fears or calm me. He is too tired to see that this will not work. It cannot. There is no time for us. There is no foundation to build a life upon together. There is no room in his life for me to squeeze into. I don’t want to be mummy number 3. Third place does not sit well with me. Failure is my biggest trigger.

And yet he loves me, despite my failing. He loves me and I don’t know why. In 32 years I have never managed to love myself. He told me this week, “you are much more loveable when you aren’t trying to run away”. I am always trying to leave…

I sit here alone in the dark on one of our only nights without kids. I am serenaded by the hum of the dishwasher in the kitchen and the washing machine in the basement. At least in the dark I cannot see the mess (I have made of my life).